January 1, 1900 to December 31, 1955

In 1861, the Boston Temperance Alliance exclaimed that "alcohol in the living body [was] not a servant or a friend, but a disturber, a foe; in a single word,...a narcotic poison." The idea of prohibition has been around since colonial times, spear-headed by a man named Dr. Benjamin Rush who argued in 1784 that excessive alcohol consumption was harmful to both the human body and mind. These ideas...

Florida was booming at the turn of the century. In 1907 the Florida governor pointed out the population increased 16.4 percent from 1900 to 1905. Even more impressive, property value increased 45.5 percent in this same period. The economy was thriving and Florida used the surplus to fund new legislation that involved creating an arsenal of state troops, restricting child labor, building good railroads,...

The stage was set; the town was ready. The conference on race relations to be held in Montgomery, Alabama was a highly anticipated event. The political affair would bring to town many of the nation's finest orators and most distinguished authorities on the subject of race. On May 8, 1900, the Montgomery Auditorium hosted the conference, which included various speeches on racial issues from greater...

In June of 1900, a young white man by the name of Marler was murdered by a black man, Pritchard, in West Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After Pritchard killed Marler, he returned to shoot the dead body repeatedly. The citizens of the parish were infuriated by the situation. Pritchard fled to the swamps. However, other black men had taken up the quarrel for him, and a conflict took place between armed white...

The opening and subsequent expansion of the Henry Ford Factory in 1903, among many other factors, led to the population of the city of Detroit skyrocketing to one million residents between the years of 1910 and 1920. The rapid expansion of urban populations led to concerns that the remaining farmers would not be able to grow enough to feed them all. Some urban intellectuals suggested that people...

Death, damage, extreme destruction - these were the results the city of Galveston, Texas had to face in the wake of the hurricane of 1900. On September 18 of that year, Joseph Hawley, a railroad executive in Galveston, wrote to his wife and daughter to share details of the ruin caused by the hurricane that hit the coastal region 10 days earlier. While Hawley sent news that their immediate family...

The horrific storm approached Galveston, Texas, with a fury and strong winds. The 20 foot wave rushed into the bay and ravished the town of 30,000 people. Trees were torn from their roots, people drowned from the rushing waters, and thousands of homes were destroyed. The mass of the storm was the worst that had been known thus far. The chaos that erupted from this massive hurricane would change...

Riots took over most of Boston when students started flipping carriages and partaking in bloody fights in the streets over a football game. The game was between freshman and sophomores at Harvard College. In the 1820’s, on Ivy League campuses the earliest form of football was invented. Princeton began playing what was then known as ‘ballown’. Participants would use their...

Among medical professionals in the early 20th century, there were many ideal practices agreed upon, and one practice in specific was advocated yet also debated upon, especially for the sake of survival among infants. In a 1900 entry on Infant Feeding that appeared in the American Journal of Nursing, W.B. Thistle stressed the importance of breastmilk as compared to artificial...

In October of 1900 the African Americans of Louisiana did not vote. The newly implemented Poll Tax Qualifications eliminated their ability to do so. The total amount of white men that registered to vote was 102,723 against only 1,147 registered African American men. What was true of the state as a whole was equally true of individual parishes, as well. Fifteen parishes reported less than ten African...